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Talk:Persona non grata
Does anyone know whether the US can eject UN delegates from New York? I remember a Law and Order episode where they did so and have been wondering about that ever since. Turtle Fan 07:07, February 1, 2010 (UTC) :I would think so. I don't know for sure myself, but it would follow based on rules of diplomacy. TR 22:32, February 1, 2010 (UTC) ::On the L&O episode it was done because the Romanian (I think) deputy ambassador had conspired to murder his lover (a local girl and US citizen) and was hiding behind his diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution. However, it occurred to me that if the US did have such authority the temptation to use it to vacate certain unfriendly governments' seats during certain key votes would be great. That this has never happened would suggest that either the US does not have that authority or that I'm an uncommonly suspicious person. The latter I already knew, but that doesn't preclude the former. Turtle Fan 23:29, February 1, 2010 (UTC) :::You would need more cause to declare someone persona non grata than disagreeing with their government's position on a particular UN vote. The L&O episode concerned a serious crime being alleged. If a government (any government) started abusing that power it would probably cause more diplomatic fallout than it would be worth. ML4E 20:52, February 2, 2010 (UTC) ::::Well Himmler used PNG against Ttomalss because he wasn't a Nazi. Featherston did it to Voorhis because Voorhis didn't tell him what he wanted to hear. Granted those are both fictional situations as well, but my understanding has always been that, if a government wants to do these things, it is within its rights. They hardly ever do because the government whose diplomats have been expelled are also within their rights to retaliate by expelling diplomats for equally arbitrary reasons--Smith ejected Russell after Featherston ejected Voorhis. At that point meaningful IR becomes nearly impossible, but one can conceive of situations where this might be considered acceptable. :::::Jake did so just before starting a war and not just because he didn't like the answer. The tit for tat expulsions was one of the things I had in mind. ML4E 22:31, February 3, 2010 (UTC) ::::::It was still unnecessary. When a war starts there's a short grace period for the diplomats to pack up and leave under a safe conduct. We even watched the British and French embassies in Washington do so during HFR. Featherston's expulsion struck me as Featherston, even while he's planning his sneak attack, still being so high on bitterness that he needs to take advantage of even more situations to flip off the US. ::::::Actually, in retrospect such a total breakdown of diplomatic relations might have been construed as a warning to the US that war was imminent, and might have given them an opportunity to put their forces on alert. They seemed to have somewhere around twelve hours before the expulsions and the first wave of attacks. Turtle Fan 22:59, February 3, 2010 (UTC) ::::The UN is a special case because the US would be ejecting diplomats not to its own government but to a body to which the US and Romania, we'll say, are equally foreign and have equal rights and restrictions in their dealings. (Well the US has P5 status and Romania doesn't, but you know what I mean.) It would be the difference between me hanging up the phone when you try to call me and me cutting the wires (to date myself a bit) when you try to call someone else. :::::You're right, the UN would be a special case. Since they are delegates to an independant organization rather than to the US, they may have special rights which restricts the US from declaring them persona non grata. ML4E 22:31, February 3, 2010 (UTC) ::::::That was why I had wondered. On the other hand, there must be some system in place to take care of, say, spies in the North Korean delegation, or just plain old felons abusing diplomatic immunity as in the L&O. Maybe the UN has an office to hear requests for PNG from the State Department, or maybe there's some procedure for deciding the matter jointly. Turtle Fan 22:59, February 3, 2010 (UTC) ::::Anyway, while I know of no cases of the US ejecting General Council diplomats in real life, I do know of cases of other governments ejecting special envoys and whatnot. And yes it does tend to hurt their reputations and credibility quite a bit. Turtle Fan 22:59, February 2, 2010 (UTC) HT's characters' uses of persona non grata is pretty out of step with the way real governments use it. It's pretty much reserved for diplomats who are caught committing acts of espionage, and is also invoked in cases where a diplomat commits a crime abroad and hides behind immunity. (In practice, the country on whose behalf the suspect is working usually revokes immunity if the country where the crime was committed is able to make a case strong enough to prosecute, and if the country that wants to prosecute has a court system that's not a grim joke.) Even in such extreme cases, invoking PNG is a major move, as it's an insult to the country whose diplomats are being expelled and invariably exacerbates relations between the two governments. In AWoD we can give it a pass because diplomacy is such a novel thing to the domain-masters that the rules and customs of international relations haven't evolved into anything that could remotely be codified. Even discussing terms for Hogram's surrender to Reatur is a confusingly unfamiliar experience for both of them. Featherston and Smith slapping one another's ambassadors with PNG made no sense: A war was about to start, so the embassies would have soon been expelled anyway. Besides, Russell and Voorhis were just doing their jobs, which was to deliver their respective governments' messages accurately (and preferably tactfully; Voorhis failed at this, or rather didn't bother trying, and while we didn't see Russell's meeting with Smith I'm inclined to doubt he did any better). Using PNG to punish an ambassador for delivering a message the receiving head of government doesn't want to hear subverts the spirit of every rule relating to the treatment of diplomats since Antiquity, namely "Don't shoot the messenger." And the example in Worldwar is worst of all. Germany is expelling a diplomat because he hurt their feelings?? Yes, yes, I know, Turtledove's Nazis don't care if the whole world thinks they're jerkasses (the real ones did, at least before the shooting started) but I don't know of any government, past or present, bellicose enough to take such a serious diplomatic maneuver so lightly. Especially not against a more powerful government: The Nazis really couldn't afford to antagonize the Lizards like that. The fact that they were making secret preparations for an attack on Lizardy Poland means they should have been extra-nice in an attempt to lull the Lizards into a false sense of security. Well maybe that would have made the Lizards suspicious. So maybe business as usual would have been better, but still, there's no reason to go out of your way to piss them off. Turtle Fan 18:04, March 12, 2011 (UTC)